[…] The professor was fond of telling anecdotes about his favorite composers. One story he shared about the great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, I’ve never been able to verify, but it conveys such powerful wisdom, I …read more […]

This is a great story. Robert Frost had a similar outlook on why structure matters in the creative act of poetry: "Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down."

Great Frost quote, John. Never heard that one. Into the file it goes!

Oh yes, Stravinsky talks about this in his book Poetics of Music. "...in art as in everything else, one can build only upon a resisting foundation... My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each of my undertakings.... my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles." Conveniently, it is available on Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=UwrtfNYIylQC&pg=PA64#v=onepage&q&f=false